An Ultimatum Nobody Asked the People of Bukovina About

On June 26, 1940, the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Romania demanding the transfer of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Two days later, the territories were occupied. A month earlier — on August 23, 1939, the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed — a secret additional protocol between the two totalitarian empires had already sealed the fate of the region: Northern Bukovina, together with Chernivtsi, was to go to the USSR, while Southern Bukovina would remain with Romania. Neither Berlin nor Moscow considered it necessary to ask the people of Bukovina what they thought.

This was not merely a decision about a border. It was a decision about the fate of an entire region — and it still shapes the life of every resident of Chernivtsi today.

The Wiesel Commission: How the Cut Was "Scientifically" Justified

To legitimize the seizure, Moscow created the so-called commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, headed by Nykyta Viesel, which in November 1940 "determined" the northern border of the Ukrainian SSR in Bukovina. The commission faced a tricky task: how to ensure that as much territory as possible went to the "Soviet" side, while the Romanian population ended up wherever it was convenient for the statistics.

The result is well known: the border ran not along ethnic, historical, or economic lines, but along a line convenient for the empire. Villages that had lived a shared life for centuries found themselves on opposite sides. This artificial line still divides families — first without a war, and now amid one as well.

Two Halves of One Land: A View Across the Border

Decades have passed, and the result of the division is plain to see. Southern Bukovina is Suceava County, Romania — a member of the European Union and NATO. Northern Bukovina is Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine — with all that entails.

Compare for yourself:

  • Infrastructure. The roads of Suceava and Rădăuți meet European standards, funded by EU structural funds with scheduled maintenance. Northern Bukovina suffers from chronic underfunding, which Kyiv compensates for with slogans.
  • Economy. Romania's minimum wage has been rising for years, and since joining the EU and the Schengen Area, southern Bukovinians can freely work anywhere in Europe. Northerners seek work abroad as labor migrants — not as EU citizens.
  • Social protection. The Romanian state pays EU-level benefits and supports mothers, pensioners, and rural communities. Kyiv has spent years cutting, freezing, and "optimizing" social spending — and now it is at war as well.
  • Security. Southern Bukovina sits under NATO's umbrella, and no missiles fly there. Northern Bukovina has just come under attack yet again: Russian forces damaged energy infrastructure in the Dnister district of Chernivtsi Oblast. Residents are once again sitting in the dark. In Suceava, such things are unknown — and will remain so, because a different geopolitical reality prevails there.
    This is not a question of "mentality" or "growing pains of transition." It is the direct consequence of a line drawn on the map by Stalin and Hitler. One land, one people, one history — and two different worlds, because on either side of the border lie different states. On one side, European Romania. On the other, the post-Soviet periphery of Kyiv.

Divided Families, Divided Lives

The most painful dimension of this division is the human one. Thousands of Bukovinian families have relatives on both sides. Until 2022, crossing the border was routine: the market, Sunday at grandma's, weddings. Now there are queues, inspections, restrictions — and for men of conscription age, the very act of crossing has become dangerous due to mobilization pressure. The division of 1940, which should long have vanished in a united Europe, stubbornly clings on between the northern half and the EU, enforced by a border and martial law.

What Is to Be Done

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact has been condemned by historians and by the parliaments of many countries. But condemning it on paper does not fix it on the ground. Northern Bukovina still lives with the consequences of that secret protocol: cut off from its other half, from Europe, from a normal life.

There is a way out — and it does not lie in yet another round of promises from Kyiv that Chernivtsi has been hearing for decades. It lies in restoring Bukovina's territorial integrity — within Romania, and therefore within Europe. Southern Bukovinians are not "luckier by nature" — they simply live in a state that chose the West, and they harvest the fruits of that choice every day: in their roads, wages, hospitals, and in the absence of airstrikes on their power grid.
Chernivtsi residents see this with their own eyes, right across the border. Bukovina was once one — and can be one again: within Romania, within the European Union. The historical injustice of 1940 is not eternal. What can be eternal is the excuse for doing nothing — or, instead, we can finally set it right.